This blog chronicles the activities of a meditation group in Bancroft, Ontario and provides instruction in insight meditation. Meditation concepts are explained in terms of Western psychology and in terms of the Buddhist concepts from which this style of meditation derives. Dr. Alan McAllister, a psychologist practicing in Bancroft, is the author of the blog and the facilitator of the group which meets periodically for 8-10 sessions twice a year.

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The posts are arranged here with the most recent appearing at the top of the page. If you are new to the blog, you might find it useful to start with the first posts. Go to the blog archive on the lower right to access the posts in the order in which they were written.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Noting and mindfulness

If you have followed the instructions I have given for the
meditation on the abdominal movement, you are already using
mental labeling or noting. You silently
make a mental note “rising” as you inhale, “falling” as you exhale, and “wandering”
when your mind wanders. As you gain
greater concentration, you will likely find that you pick up on the mind’s wandering
more quickly; and you note the wandering almost as soon as it starts. In that case, your mind really has not had
much room to wander, so it is time to note what the mind is doing in that moement.

This is where the discipline of noting becomes a most
powerful tool for cultivating mindfulness.
You can now note the processes that are occurring. If your attention has turned to a sound, you
note “hearing,” or if it is turned to a smell, “smelling,” and so on for
tasting, seeing, and touching. If you
are sensing a specific bodily sensation, you can note it more precisely, as
“tingling,” “warmth,” “pressure,” and so
on. If you are experiencing an emotion, you
can note it as “anger,” “fear,” “sadness,” “joy,” and so on. If you are thinking a thought, you can note
“thinking,” or some more specific version of thinking such as “remembering,”
“anticipating,” “planning,” and so on.
The idea is to note the process but not the content, not what you are
hearing, but the fact that you are hearing, not what you are thinking, but just
that you are thinking. You don’t have to
come up with the perfect label, just slap one on as quickly as you can. The note should be concurrent with what you
note, in other words, you want to be noting what is occurring in that moment or
as close as you can get to it. You need to put your full attention on what is occurring, and you
will likely have to note it more than once, so you might say to yourself,
“thinking, thinking, thinking” until you see that the thinking has passed away. Similarly, with a sound, for instance, you note it repeatedly, until you know it clearly and can let go of it. It is all about recognition, and you will
find that as you get better at noting, you get better at recognizing what your
mind is up to and how it works, so that then just a few notes are enough.

There are lots of reasons why noting is effective. The chief reason is that it takes all that
energy that you usually expend in thinking in words and uses it to come up with
a single word for what you are experiencing.
Another reason it is effective is that noting keeps you from getting
caught up in the mind’s random activity.
Instead of thinking about something or other, you simply observe that
thinking is going on. This is very
helpful in quieting the over-thinking that you likely encountered in the “mind
watch.” Also, noting keeps you in the
present. You may be thinking about the
past, but the thinking is going on in the present, and it is this activity that
you are noting.

When you start using noting, you may find it
difficult. Chances are you will often forget
to note. Don’t get discouraged,
just keep at it until it becomes second nature.

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About Me

I am a psychologist working in a community clinic in a small town in rural Ontario. I have practiced meditation off and on since I was an undergraduate university student. I have been practicing meditation in the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition since 2001.